When the sequel to the 1992 Horror Classic was released a few weeks ago I couldn't wait. My wife and I braved the outside masked up and vaxed up. Unfortunately the only people in the theater were us and our daughter and her teen friends. It was my treat, i wanted the kids to see a movie directed by a black woman with an all black leading cast. What I wasn't prepared for was the new direction Candyman took me. If you're from the Chi like myself, Candyman is not synonymous with Cabrini Green. The projects from the near north side was just another hood with the same shit on the south and west side. But Candyman (1992) made Cabrini famous. A white woman braving the projects to get to the bottom of an urban legend. Well, life doesn't work that way, Cabrini Green's last tower was torn down in 2011 and when the dust settled the people were scattered throughout the city with a "section 8" voucher and no hope.
Nia Dacosta director for the Candyman sequel took a bold step and chose to highlight everything that was wrong; gentrification, mental health, PTSD and the lingering effects of project housing. She could've taken the easy route and painted the screen with blood and guts. But she decided to make "Candyman" a metaphor for every black man/woman who were murdered by the police or mobs of angry white men. The proverbial bee hive is massive, the ghosts of Emmitt Till and Breonna Taylor are in the hive. The 3 young men who tried to register voters in Mississippi are in the hive, George Floyd and Laquan McDonald are in the hive. What if there was a Candyman to protect innocent brown and black lives from police brutality? Why does violence beget violence? I remember the 90's I was a teen during the height of the crack era and the gangs. Chicago was the murder capital, 936 people were murdered. According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, "The overwhelming number of homicide victims, 88 percent, were male. And, although the black population of Chicago is just under 40 percent, blacks accounted for nearly 80 percent of the 1992 murder victims." (William Recktenwald and Colin McMahon, 1993)
The article referenced is 28 years old and still nothing has changed. So what is the enduring legacy of Cabrini Green and the 15,000 residents that were displaced? What about the displaced residents from Robert Taylor Homes or the Harold Ickes and Ida B. Wells. The failed experiment called public housing helped create a segregated housing complex with generational poverty and hopelessness. I remember Ronald Regan coined the term "welfare queen" which stigmatized young black/brown mothers who just needed assistance to get by. There's a line from a Tupac song "every nigga got a little thug in him". 100% facts.
The struggle is embedded in our DNA, yes Cabrini Green and every other project in Chicago are long gone. They have been replaced by Starbucks, Whole Foods and tofu burgers.
Comments